If you’ve followed the Braid story at all, it’s been incredible to see the hype mount behind this indie game. It seems to have brewed the perfect storm of a highly regarded developer, along with a timely release on the Xbox 360, and a game that just plain looks cool. It hit the Xbox marketplace on August 6th for 1200 points.

When you look past the all-star developer, the months of articles leading up to the release, Microsoft pushing for the 1200 point price, and all that, what you have left is an impressively unique platformer. The game is quite Mario-like (it is an homage in some ways), and you basically walk around, jumping when necessary, sometimes landing on enemies to kill them. There is even a save-the-princess spin to the storyline, which ends up being interesting enough to follow, but not make the game.

Braid gets really interesting when you look past the most basic elements though. The first is the art direction–the game looks great. The vibrant colors, cartoonish enemies, and overall innocence of the game are endearing, to say the least. The other big change is a main mechanic of the game: time manipulation. The game is not about having three lives and a bunch of continues, instead the game is intentionally hard, but every time you die (or are tricked) you can just rewind and try again. This not only puts a fun spin on the platformer, but later in the game it is integrated into the gameplay so that sometime you have to die and rewind in order to progress.

What this means is that even though the core mechanics are that of a platformer, the game relies on puzzle elements to increase the difficulty. The challenge on each stage centers around collecting pieces of a jigsaw puzzle from hard-to-reach places. Getting to these places often requires an excellent understanding of your surroundings and a little out-of-the-box thinking. At first the time manipulation just saves you when you die, but later on it is made more complex and you can do a run and rewind, but your shadow starts again, acting like a second character. This means things that would be impossible to do (something like pulling a lever on the right side of the screen while running through a door on the left) can be achieved. There is also a green haze on some items which makes them immune to rewinding. It’s fun because it’s so simple, but still difficult to wrap your brain around. Think Portal, but in an art game and without Valve’s humor.

Braid is made up of a number of worlds, the later ones being where your time manipulation goes from simple rewinding to more complex abilities. This is where the game gets really interesting and players will have to sit back and really understand the task at hand before they take action because retrieving the piece of the puzzle they are going after may require multiple steps. At time it can be frustrating to understand what you have to do only to lack the coordination to do it, but with time all the puzzles are solvable. This is to say that while a few of the challenges are tough none are broken, and with some patience no walkthrough will be needed (or even wanted). Hardcore players can show off their deep understanding of the puzzles and their mastering of the game’s mechanics with speed runs through the game.

{ad}Ultimately you maybe be turned off by all the hype behind Braid, it’s $15 price point, or its arthouse styling but if you give this game a chance you won’t be disappointed. As far as platformers/indies go it’s one of the most fun experiences you can have and it’s some of the best downloadable content we have yet to see on the Xbox 360. Some people have latched on the price as something to complain about and it is not great to see the 1200 point price becoming a trend, especially given the fact that the game is not something most people will want to play through a second time (aside from speed runs) but given the amount of work that went into this game and how impressive the end product is we’ll let the price slide.

Braid is one of the few must-have titles we have seen so far on XBLA. There are other good games, even great ones, but as far as games that are unique and innovative Braid really stands alone.